Vehicle creation rules, and a Caveat Options

[Aku]

ok, despite the rather luke warm reception of my last program (which I'll admit, was just me being bored, and with minimum flash experience, i felt like messing around) I'm CONSIDERING (making no promises here) a vehicle creation program as well. However, reading through the design chapter, i came across this

[Ol' Scratch]

I allow it as long as they build the vehicle itself first and write up a little commercial excerpt about it. I then look that over and let them customize it to their heart's content with the customization options, just like any other vehicle or drone.

[Reign Maker]

I create vehicles from scratch all the time...I normally just call them the Eurocar Westwind 2065 XL or something like that (would depend on the chassis, but you get the idea). It just means your not the only guy on the road with it. The gm is allowed to have all his npc with the car too...and lone star maybe has a armored version. Thats how I run it as a GM and how every GM I have ever played under has run it.. DID I TOTALY misunderstand the rule?

Yeah what Doctor Funkenstein said!

[Aku]

No reign, that sounds like what i would do as well, if i had a player ask me. But i just wonder, how much more variation you can get and still call something "mass produced". I guess the point of the statement is that anything within that chapter isn't a "customization", but more of a "option" coming out of the factory; you'll have your westwinds coming out with electric PP, and then 2, maybe 3 Gas PP (low, mid and high range ), but as i understand the rules as a design, you can set all of the engine variables as a design option between the mins and the max, and thats where i think it might get... "abused"

[nezumi]

As a GM, I use the vehicle creation rules sometimes (both the design and the customization methods). I would use them a lot more than contact generation rules, since I'm pretty easy going on contacts.

[Reign Maker]

[Aku]

I dont have a mjor issue with the min max effect either (although it might seem like). And i would agree on the disproportinate number of facility's needed to "customize" a ride. Customizations, in my mind, aren't done in facilities, they're done in shops. I think of a facility as being able to mass produce the same vehicle over and over, but anything after-market would be done in a shop, in my opinion. The likeliest reason i can the rule being that way, is to prevent players from saying "what do you mean during design, this part needs a facility, but once it gets on the road, it's easier all of a sudden (able to be done in a shop). Perhaps the easy answer is to make a facility something the player has no option to have their own of (barring some extreme circumstance) and make any customizations need a shop only.

[BitBasher]

[Reign Maker]

[Ol' Scratch]

Toolkit: What you carry in a box and can throw in the backseat.
Shop: The tools in your garage or shed if you're an enthusiast.
Facility: A professional garage, like Mr. Goodwrench.
Factory: Where companies mass produce their vehicles.

[Reign Maker]

[Edward]

Some vehicles, such as the tiny crawler drones, should be constructible with equipment that would fit in the back of a lory for transport, that is to say shop level tools, that would give you light weight mettle forming and a good quality mettle laith, combined with a willingness to purchase engines and possibly programmable control modules of the shelf (as model plain and car enthusiasts do today) or do a lot more work making them this would give you the ability to build any body 0 drone and some larger vehicles. (I’m embarrassed to say I have seen it but didn’t that show American chopper do 90% of there work in what would be considered a shop in SR)

Lager stuff would need access to a facility.

Then comes the question of cost, the design rules are priced assuming the economies of production line assembly, but a prototype will cost you 60% less on most vehicles (-.6 to chase mark up), a GM would need to decide what to charge in any given situation for himself, it strikes me as strange that a prototype would be cheaper, although the costs of setting up a production line are not present that cost would be spread over a great many units and a many parts may need to be remade during the creation of a prototype.

The above refers to a PC building a new type of vehicle. If the player wants to buy a vehicle then he could design one to propose to the GM, and if it is reasonable then the GM agrees and it exists as a commercial vehicle the character can buy.

As to the requirement of a facility for things like armour. If I had the armour plaits, already formed to the correct size and shape I would expect to be able to fit them in a vehicle shop, mechanics shops regularly contain windlass winches to move engines around and welders and bolts enough to attach the armour, I can only assume that nobody sells pre made armour upgrades for vehicles and thus it is necessary to form the armour, this is what requires eth facility, you cant just weld extra steel plate to a vehicle and expect it to stop much.

Edward

[Ol' Scratch]

[Reign Maker]

BUT WHY IS A SHOP AN INFERIOR TOOL!!!! and I can shape and cut the metal with my welding torch..it cost an extra 50 bucks for 11 yes 11 different flame mods for it. I understand that the metal would be prefabed for the parts cost.... or I would go to a scrap yard and pay 10 nuyen for a piece of sheet metal..... and save a thousand nuyen.

[Ol' Scratch]

Because you don't have the tools to easily remove an entire engine block, or to easily get under the car, or to easily perform any other number of objects that you can do in a Facility.

Not ALL customization jobs require a Facility, you know. It's only an inferior set of tools for THOSE particular tasks which normally require one. Turning your car into a convertible? A Shop is sufficient. Installing a Valkyrie suite? Shop. Adding an External Cargo cannister? Shop. Installing Power Amps? Shop. Adding Roll Bars or a Crash Cage? Shop. etc.

Note that this is as opposed to installing a Gun Turret, adding a Drive-By-Wire system, doing a complete Engine Customization, or completely redoing the cabin so that it qualifies as an Advanced Passenger Protection System. All of those require a Facility to do it right and in a timely fashion, even if you could do it with inferior tools if you put enough time and patience into the procedure.

[SpasticTeapot]

What I want to know is how you, as GM's, rule the combination of things into franken-vehicles. For example, what if Joe Average really likes Jaguars. However, amongst the assorted design problems constantly found on Jaguars, it also needs a new engine. To save time and money (and get a much better engine besides), he drops in the engine from a '69 T-bird. How would you rule this? (Our next-door neighbor was doing exactly this, so don't tell me it's unreasonable.)
Of course, Shadowrunners tend to be much more skilled in their area(s) of choice than Joe Average, so they may try things more along the lines of shortening the transmission on a high-power truck, and attaching it to the frame of a midsize sedan to create a perfect getaway vehicle, or, for particularly clever and sneaky PC's, replacing the paneling on their armed-and-armored Westwind so as to make it appear to be a beat-up old Americar.
And, lastly, how would you rule characters converting drones into vehicles?

[Reign Maker]

So your saying or this is what I infer anyway... Is that any charecter can build anything (if they have at least 1 skill) with limited tools it just may take him the longest time.

My charecter has a vehicle kit..(a screw driver, some wrenches, oil rags)... I can install a extra large turret in 72 hours if I get 1 success at target number 6 (base is 4 +2 for haveing "inadequate tools" page 95 shadow run core rules) You can be my gm any day chummer (if I understand how you use the mechanic)...Ill never break a sweat with technical school edge ill be friggin McGuiver ;)

I think the rule is broken and thats my comlaint. They try to fix it with that crappy mechanic but they should have taken a little more time in picking what level of kit different mods needed not saying +2 if your tools aren't good enough. If he is worried about min/maxing this is where I see it taking place. And who would buy a friggin facility when you could have a shop and only a +2 modifier for the tools being used.

[Reign Maker]

[Ol' Scratch]

[SpasticTeapot]

[Ol' Scratch]

Once again: I don't mind. Faster power plants tend to have worse Signatures, Economy, and lower Load ratings, too. If they just want speed, they can knock themselves out for all I care, especially since the difference isn't that drastic compared to what they could have done with a standard power plant.

A gasoline Sports Car plant versus a Sedan plant, for instance, has a total max Speed difference of 110 and a max Acceleration difference of 4. That difference can easily be countered by using Engine Customization, and anything over about a Speed of 200 is generally a waste anyway.

So sure, "munchkinize" yourself away. For a running vehicle, however, I'd rather have an EFC power plant (which is only available for Sedans, not Sports Cars) and its superior Signature rating and Acceleration (which I value more than Speed) that's only 2 points less than what a Sports Car can get.

[SpasticTeapot]

[Ol' Scratch]

The only thing that makes a drone a drone is that its remote controlled. Adding a seat and even manual controls to a drone chassis (especially the larger ones, like Body 2+) just makes it a regular vehicle, albeit a really bizarre looking one. It's exactly the same as removing manual controls, stripping out all the seats, and adding a remote control interface to a sedan chassis -- you've just made a "vehicle" into a "drone."

Both of those options are completely legal within the rules and is just a matter of semantics.

[Edward]

Generalty I try to avoid mixing and maching vehicle parts in game becos it gets confusing, it also gets confusing out of game but I don’t ave to deal with that becos I am not a mechanic.

I would not make concessions to stats for using a non slandered enjoin. What I would do is allow a non standard engine to represent several vehicle customisation options, the in game fact of the non standard engine would be purely descriptive, cost, time and difficulty would be unchanged. Inaccurate I know but I cant balance it any other way)

If you can fit a seat in a drone then go for it, there is no balance problem, yes you no longer risk MIJI but at the same time your meet is at risk if it gets attacked. And you can only be in one place at a time so no advantage there. No bigy for my money.

Edward

[Aku]

One other thing to remember, is i dont think all chasis types can take all types of power plants.

And Spastic, if you were asking me about the link, I was referring to the contact generator i had made earlier in the week, i'm still wrestling getting even the core down for the flash vehicle generator.
<joke>
I'm finding that i think i would make a better development manager than i would actual developer/programmer... I'm much better at coming up with the concept and flow of things than i am at actually coding them.
</joke>